


i lose myself infused in something more than what they've seen

by orphan_account



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 12:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21243911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “Wait, Mr. Stark—Tony!”When Tony stops, Elijah swallows a few times with a dry throat, and ventures, “I’m surprised you didn’t beat me to it.”“I did,” Tony says bluntly, and when he continues there’s a terrifying intensity in his words, speaking faster than before. “You’re not the first to make an artificial intelligence, maybe I wasn’t either. But you did it differently. I think – I think these androids of yours are actually alive, forget whatever you’re telling the media, and I’ve done that too, I made one alive; but I had a magic rock bring mine to life, Kamski, and somehow you skipped over that step.”





	i lose myself infused in something more than what they've seen

Elijah’s family never has a lot of money, growing up.

There’s always food on the table, and he has new clothes for school every year, but there are no trips to Disneyland; they don’t go to visit relatives, because gas is expensive beyond the five-minute drive to his mom’s work every morning, and plane tickets are simply out of the question. His dad doesn’t pay child support very often. He visits even less, skipping birthdays and Christmases but showing up drunk at random, and, well, Elijah’s pretty much accepted that his dad is never going to take a role as an actual parent. It’s fine. Elijah _has_ a family, his mom and his half-brother Gavin and Gavin’s mom Leah, and their family is little and kind of broken but it’s enough.

They’re always supportive, unwavering even when Elijah goes on for hours and hours about his insane dreams of creating _artificial life,_ and the feeling in his chest when he finally achieves it – it’s indescribable. It’s like there’s a star being born in his chest.

“I did it,” he gasps, “I did it!” He’s yelling incoherently, laughing and crying all at once, because he’s sixteen and _he did it._

“You did it,” Gavin says, grinning at him. Seeing his joy as well is like a feedback loop, and Elijah is half-bent over and struggling to breathe because it’s so overwhelming. Their moms are running outside to see what all the commotion is about, and Gavin’s talking to them, explaining, but Elijah can’t hear a word. He’s just staring in absolute wonder at the pile of mechanics formed in the vague shape of a girl, tilting her head as she processes the scene in front of her. As she _learns._

“Hello,” she says, voice slightly staticky. “My name is Chloe.”

(He never tells anyone this, but he knows from day one that she is more than a machine, because up until that point he called her Sarah Connor. She chose the name Chloe for herself.)

He gets to meet Tony Stark, which is pretty awesome. He’s not sure how it happens, exactly, but Amanda Stern probably had something to do with it. She’s always doing stuff like that. Finding opportunities for him in the most unexpected of places.

“H-hi, nice to meet you,” Elijah says, rather shakily.

He curses himself. He couldn’t say something more eloquent? Yet Mr. Stark doesn’t seem bothered, and dispenses with greetings entirely.

“I hear you’ve managed something pretty remarkable,” the man says, and frowns. “Of course, that depends entirely on your definition of remarkable since, you know, I’ve seen some pretty remarkable things that I wouldn’t necessarily denote as positive experiences – aliens and flying cities and popsicle soldiers and all that—” Stark Industries’ CEO, Ms. Pepper Potts, is glaring hotly enough to set Mr. Stark’s goatee on fire. “—in any case, as I was saying, congratulations.”

Elijah just gawps at him for a second, and the silence is starting to get awkward when he finally splutters, “Uh—thank you sir!”

“No, no, none of that, come on kid, I’m not old,” Mr. Stark waves him off. “Just Tony.”

Elijah can’t really think of anything to say, then. Or rather, he can, except it sounds kind of rude. But it’s something he’s been wondering about for a while.

And then Tony’s leaving, without a goodbye. He has a meeting to get to; even Amanda’s influence can’t get more than a few minutes of Iron Man’s time. Elijah’s made a major breakthrough in science and engineering, but he’s still just a high school student surrounded by a whole lot of controversy and skepticism.

“Wait, Mr. Stark—Tony!”

When Tony stops, Elijah swallows a few times with a dry throat, and ventures, “I’m surprised you didn’t beat me to it.”

“I did,” Tony says bluntly, and when he continues there’s a terrifying intensity in his words, speaking faster than before. “You’re not the first to make an artificial intelligence, maybe I wasn’t either. But you did it differently. I think – I think these androids of yours are actually _alive,_ forget whatever you’re telling the media, and I’ve done that too, I made one alive; but I had a magic rock bring mine to life, Kamski, and somehow you skipped over that step.”

“I just—"

“I want to know how you did it,” Tony interrupts him, and there’s something unnerving in his expression that Elijah really doesn’t like. “I can help you, if you like—we can talk shop, or if you need money—"

“No thanks,” Elijah says.

He says it without thinking, and it’s definitely rude, but Tony doesn’t look offended, just nods and follows Ms. Potts out of the room.

Amanda chastises him for it later. He refused an offer of help from Tony Stark – a genius who could have improved the code, and funded the whole project in the blink of an eye. Elijah knows he was stupid to say no, but he doesn’t care. This is his. These designs. He made Chloe, made them all, and he did it on his own.

He doesn’t need anyone except his family.

He was too confident.

He loses them all not long after. The Snap, everyone calls it. Mom and Leah are out running errands when it happens, but Gavin’s with him, out in the backyard teaching Chloe to play soccer.

She’s no good at it. Her synthetic joints don’t move as smoothly as the ones in a biological organism, her processors don’t lock onto the motion of the ball in time to ever hit it, but she’s trying her best. Her laughter sounds real, as happy as any human’s, and it makes the boys laugh too.

Elijah turns to pass the ball back to Gavin, and – he’s gone. Gavin’s gone. The air is very thick with dust, for some reason, and Elijah sneezes.

“Gavin?” he calls. “Dude, not cool.”

Chloe’s LED abruptly goes red, and she raises her palm to show Elijah a projection of a news report. “EMERGENCY” spans it in terrifying red letters. “Elijah, there seems to be reports of this occurrence all over the world in the last estimated sixty seconds. Precisely 50% of the Earth’s population is vanishing without known cause.”

“What—” Elijah says, and, “Gavin, get out here! Where the hell did you go?”

“Elijah, he isn’t—”

“Gavin!” he calls, sprinting inside the house – slamming open doors, the apartment is tiny so _where is Gavin hiding,_ and _why_ is he hiding – what’s happening, _this isn’t funny_ –

His hands tremble as he thumbs through the contacts on his phone to find Mom’s number, and it rings and rings and rings out, even after three tries. Leah’s does the same. Hell, he even tries to call his dad – nothing. It doesn’t mean anything. It can’t.

“_Gavin!_” he screams.

Chloe has made her way inside to find him. She moves slowly. She may be low on the thirium compound that keeps her biocomponents running smoothly; he hasn’t figured out how to stop it from evaporating.

Her hand creaks audibly as she rests it on Elijah’s shoulder.

“They are gone,” she says, very gently.

“No,” he tells her. “No, no, no, you’re _wrong,_ what’s happening – no, stop it, you’re lying! _Shut up!_”

She goes silent.

Everything is silent, the whole city brought to a stand-still. Elijah doesn’t know what to say, what to do; it feels like one wrong word, wrong motion, wrong thought brushing up against this strange, empty world, and it would all just—

shatter.

Amanda gets custody of him, though why she bothered Elijah doesn’t know. He doesn’t see much of her. He gets free range of the – not quite a mansion, but certainly a very large house. He floats in a fog much of the time, staring dully off into nothing when he isn’t working on his androids, when Chloe doesn’t remind him to eat and drink and sleep. He’s glad when he turns eighteen and can move out. He buys an apartment in downtown Detroit, a pretty small place even though he could easily afford something bigger thanks to insurance money. Empty spaces just remind him of the people that used to fill them.

He starts commercially producing androids in 2022, and they’re a hit instantly because companies need something to fill the positions of the missing half of humanity. Elijah has more money than he’ll ever need and he donates most of it to charity. He’s hailed as a hero, in place of the Avengers who failed them all.

He never shows up to any of the awards ceremonies. He usually gets drunk instead.

It is on one morning after such a binge that he wakes up with a smashing headache and the coordinates of Tony Stark’s current home written on a sketchpad next to the empty bottles on the counter.

He has no idea how he got them; probably by hacking something he shouldn’t have, is his best guess. He should throw them away.

Oh, hell with it.

The cabin’s on a lake. It’s pretty beautiful, but not really Elijah’s style. It feels too exposed.

“So, you have about ten seconds before I blow you into smithereens,” Tony says, pushing his apparent daughter behind him and standing there with a pleasant expression, while he aims the hand of his Iron Man suit directly at Elijah’s heart.

“Is that nanotech?” Elijah asks. “Cool.”

He may be drunk again, just slightly; he had a couple tequila shots before he left.

Tony stares.

“Hang on – Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Elijah says, grinning, and then scowls. “Wait, no it’s not. I’m _Elijah,_ by the way, in case you were thinking I was Gavin. But he’s not Jesus Christ either. And he’s dead, so you probably didn’t think he was me. Or I was him. Did you think he was who I was or I was—” he trails off as he tries to remember where this train of thought was going. Gavin would have made fun of him. Or maybe Gavin would have hugged him. Either would be welcome right now; Elijah misses his brother so, so much, and he wants more than anything just to have him back. But being drunk will do for now, and if that’s not enough then he’s got some of that new drug back home, the one that’s gaining popularity – red ice is what they’re calling it.

“Are you okay?” Tony asks apprehensively. His daughter has vanished; the door of the cabin is just swinging closed when Elijah glances over.

He looks back at Tony, and tries to comprehend the question. “Oh. Did I say that stuff out loud? I’m sorry. Or I’m not, but I still didn’t mean to say that out loud. I think red ice is illegal. Actually, it definitely is. Woah!” The world is tilting alarmingly. “I’m gonna go now. I don’t really remember getting here. Also, I think I might have hacked something important to your company, but I don’t remember that either so you should probably check everything.”

Tony pinches the bridge of his nose, looking like he sincerely regrets his life choices.

“Come in before you pass out,” he says resignedly. “And you’re helping me find whatever the hell you broke into.”

This is how Elijah ends up eating dinner with the Starks. Only once he’s sobered up, of course. And then he feels pretty horrible about the way he behaved, but they’re nice to him anyway, and the spaghetti is delicious. He frankly feels better than he has in years. It’s like a glimpse of having a real family again and he’s holding back tears the whole time.

“I never did figure out how you make your bots,” Tony admits at one point. “I thought about just buying one of them and reverse-engineering it, but that seemed like cheating.”

Elijah first response is defensiveness. But—

Instead he takes a deep breath through the lump in his throat, and he asks, “Do you want me to show you?”

The coding is far from quick to go through. Elijah returns to the cabin again and again, and Tony’s fascinated by all of it. Pepper laughs at their antics and instantly takes to Chloe, who’s thrilled to have a new friend – and Morgan is an absolute angel. She brings Elijah a drawing one day, this ugly little cartoon character made with crayons on the back of a shopping receipt, that Elijah wouldn’t know was supposed to be him if not for it having the same god-awful haircut and beard. He loves it.

He thanks her and as soon she leaves the room, he breaks down crying.

“It’s alright, kid,” Tony says, and there’s something behind his eyes, a pain just as sharp as what Elijah is feeling. He’s looking at Elijah, this sobbing, scrawny, drug-addicted twenty-year-old, but he’s remembering someone else.

“It’s not alright,” Elijah chokes out. “It’s not. Tony, I don’t know how—how do I do this, how do I keep going—"

He’s so _tired._

Tired of hurting. He wants life to get better. He wants to get off the red ice, because being high numbs the pain but the comedown is so much worse and he hates himself for trying to escape like this.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry.”

Tony puts one hand on Elijah’s shoulder and the other on the back of his neck, and he yanks him into a tight embrace. It feels like all the scattered parts of Elijah’s soul are being pulled back together, piece by agonizing piece. It’s a long time before he stops shaking, and longer before his tears dry, but Tony doesn’t let go, won’t let go until Elijah manages a smile – a very shaky, tremulous smile, but a smile nonetheless.

Tony says, “It’s going to be okay.”

Elijah asks, “How?”

And that evening Pepper arranges a stint at a private drug clinic. It’s daunting, but Elijah doesn’t argue.

The process is messy and painful, and there’s a lot more crying, not to mention vomiting, and screaming, and so much _anger,_ but when it ends—

When it ends, when he gets out of the clinic after two miserable weeks, he likes the look of pride on Tony’s and Pepper’s faces, and he likes even more the pride he feels for himself. It isn’t easy, but he’s getting better. Maybe Tony was right. Maybe he really _is_ going to be okay.

(It was only a maybe, though.

Because Tony was wrong, as Elijah finds out all too soon. It’s never going to be okay.

It’s a year later, and he’s at the funeral, and he has never in his entire life felt less okay than he does right now.

He stands way off in the background, halfway behind a tree. The others, the Avengers and the rest, don’t notice his presence, which is for the best because the media never got wind of his link to Tony and he may as well keep it that way. He feels vulnerable enough without this blowing up on social media. There would be rumors of an affair, probably, ridiculous as that would be. Tony was—well, Elijah would dare to say he was like a father.

His real family is back now, because of Tony’s sacrifice, and Elijah wonders, sometimes, if it was worth it. He knows it’s horrifying, but he still wonders. He misses Tony and his family feels all wrong.

They try. His dad’s even attempting to make amends, and Mom is doing her best, but she’ll never replace the years she lost of Elijah’s life. Leah doesn’t even bother, too busy smothering her own son with affection. But Gavin gets tired of it and when he leaves in a rage, Leah is too heartbroken to argue.

Gavin doesn’t want to speak to his brother either, except to mock Elijah’s androids as mere plastic facsimiles.

Elijah withdraws into his apartment again and drowns himself in work for the most part. Chloe keeps him company, and asks him to come with her to visit Pepper and Morgan, but he can’t. He can’t adjust. His world has changed so many times; how does he know what’s real? What will last? He always loses it all in the end. Things will never again be the way they were before the Snap, and nothing will ever replace those fragile but wonderful days in the Stark household.

He eventually resigns as CEO of CyberLife, and he moves out to a grand estate a little ways outside Detroit that is in every way the opposite of his cozy apartment and he hates it here.

He makes more Chloes and they’ll never fill any of the voids in his life but he can’t bring himself to care.)

Then—

One day there is an RK800 called Connor.

Elijah says, “Pull the trigger.”

Connor doesn’t.

Then—

There is a revolution, and there are questions pouring in from every side.

Markus visits Elijah personally, and thanks him.

Most of the Chloes leave, now free to coexist with humanity, but some stay regardless, and Elijah’s chest aches with a feeling he doesn’t quite understand.

Then—

Someone rings the doorbell. One of the Chloes goes to greet them, and brings them in.

The visitor grins, looking more than a little worn by the years, but he’s still the same cocky dumbass Elijah grew up with.

“Hey, Eli,” he says, and Elijah grins back and says, “Hey, Gav.”

Tony was right.

Tony Stark was a rare kind of man. He was brilliant and he was reckless and he was wise and he was always changing but staying the same, somehow all of it at the same time, and when he said that it was going to be okay, he didn’t mean that everything was going to be perfect. He meant that Elijah would be happy one day. And Elijah _is_ happy.

The happiness doesn’t erase all the pain, it doesn’t erase the grief that sits in his chest like a constant wound, but he doesn’t want to erase it.

He’ll always remember, but he’s ready to move forward.

**Author's Note:**

> title is a lyric from "The Way" by Zack Hemsey.


End file.
